Oscar Goodman shares triumphs, trials in autobiography

Lots of people think they’ve lived an autobiography-worthy life. In the case of Oscar Goodman, a publishing house actually agrees.

His book, “Being Oscar: From Mob Lawyer to Mayor of Las Vegas — Only in America,” hits stores Tuesday. As the title confirms, it details the life he lived while holding two titles most people only learn about in newspapers. Or Martin Scorsese-directed films.

Before becoming the martini mayor, seldom making a public appearance without a showgirl on each arm, Goodman was known in mafia circles as the wiretap expert: the lawyer who meant the difference between freedom and a lifetime of orange jumpsuits.

At least one of his clients, Tony “The Ant” Spilotro, may have been better off in orange. He was beaten and buried alive in an Indiana cornfield, one of the more memorable scenes in the movie “Casino,” which was inspired by Spilotro and other mobsters who operated and skimmed money from Las Vegas casinos.

The plethora of crimes Goodman’s mob clients were accused of over the years — murder, money laundering, drug trafficking — never dissuaded his legal representation of them. It never made him concerned for his own safety, and never convinced him they were the “bad guys” the public saw them as.

“I didn’t look at it that way,” he says from behind his office desk at the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority’s headquarters. “It wasn’t my job to judge people. ... I felt I was doing the Lord’s work in terms of keeping the system honest. And that was good for everybody, not just the client.”

There are two entities Goodman doesn’t hold back his disdain for in “Being Oscar”: the media and federal government. The former just wants the sensational headline, he claims, and the latter will disregard any law to bring down its target. An offense that, when committed by someone representing the public (prosecutors, FBI, etc.), Goodman sees as more despicable than the alleged wrongdoings of his mafia clients.

“This is the honest truth: I never had a client complain — if the government could obtain information legally — if they were found guilty,” he says. “They all had the same ‘you play, you pay’ attitude.”

In the chapter “I Never Represented a Rat,” Goodman explains how mobsters of the ’80s didn’t value the oath of omerta, or code of silence, the way their predecessors once did.

“They lived by their own code,” he writes of mafia members from the ’30s and ’40s. “They were outlaws, but they had rules and — I know it sounds bizarre — ethics.”

When her husband seemed a little too fascinated with the glamorous lifestyles of people with monikers such as “Wingy,” “The Camel” and “Lefty,” Carolyn Goodman would warn her husband: “Don’t become your client.”

“That just meant don’t become friends with them. Do your job and just be a good lawyer. This is a profession,” she says.

He didn’t become his client, but he did become mayor of Las Vegas.

In this role, photos of him in the newspapers weren’t simply to capture the guy he was walking next to into a courthouse. He was the star. And he relished every moment of it.

So much so, Goodman required any films shot in Las Vegas to feature him in them. Dumbfounded directors found a way around it, called the cutting room floor, but the mayor still had his movie moment.

When he wasn’t unsuccessfully memorizing lines, he was unsuccessfully throwing out the first pitch at a 51s game. He didn’t turn down an opportunity to heighten his brand, as he called it, as the “happiest mayor in the world.” Nor did he ever hold his tongue.

Goodman once suggested a graffiti artist have his thumb severed for defacing public property. He also demanded an apology from President Barack Obama, for whom he voted in 2008, when he discouraged frivolous spending in Las Vegas. Out of loyalty to his city, Goodman voted for Romney in 2012.

“It’s so easy to just say, ‘I’m sorry. I made a mistake,’ ” Goodman writes of the president who never apologized. In fact, the former mayor has no problem demonstrating just how easy it is today.

“Mayors don’t demand apologies from presidents,” he says. “I’m the first to say I was out of line with that.”

A great source of pride for him during his 12 years as mayor is his commitment to revitalizing downtown. Tony Hsieh is the first name that probably comes to mind regarding those efforts today. Does that bother Goodman?

“The bricks and mortar of it so far are all Oscar Goodman,” he says, citing the Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health, The Smith Center for the Performing Arts, the Mob Museum and Historic Fifth Street School. “I hope we see bricks and mortar from Tony, but I didn’t do it to be remembered or lauded or praised.”

Now that his wife has taken over as mayor of Las Vegas, he says he lives vicariously through her. “Being Oscar” came about because his new position as chairman of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority’s permanent host committee simply didn’t consume the amount of time his two previous jobs did. So he wrote a book, and in doing so marveled over all he managed to do through the years.

His one regret through it all comes down to time. He didn’t devote enough of it, he says, to the baseball games, viola recitals and school plays of his four children.

“If I would give any tip it would be this: Children grow up quickly,” he says. “and YOLO.”

YOLO is an acronym popularized by rapper Drake. It stands for You Only Live Once.

Contact Xazmin Garza at xgarza@reviewjournal.com or
702-383-0477. Follow her
on Twitter @startswithanx.